Marius wrote:Audacious2 should play CDs: on my laptop it apparantly does but produces no sound (Oh, damn! -- Linux can be irritating; why the hell audacious2 does not produce sound when playing CDs??).

Is it just CDs, or also MP3s? Could it be a PulseAudio issue? According to the PulseAudio Web site page The Perfect Setup:

Regarding playing CDs, as micia wrote, Amarok is great. I also use KsCD which has a very straightforward user interface, which is often all I want when I play an audio CD.

Haven't tried an audio CD recently so I can't remember if auto detection is working, but if the CD is not recognised when inserted then see KDE 4.2.4: No option in Device Notifier to play Audio CD, although I wouldn't be surprised if the SL developers have added this on the SL 5.0 release.

EDIT: Back on my main laptop now and popped in an audio CD to see if auto detection is working under KDE 4.3.3 on SL 5.0. It is. Device Notifier on the Panel told me there were 4 actions for the device (CD): Extract Digital Audio with K3b; Play Audio CD with KsCD; Copy with K3b; Play Audio CD with Amarok; Do Nothing (which is 5, not 4, items, although I suppose "Do Nothing" is not an action!). Selecting the relevant action from the pop-up window launches the application. KsCD has been given a little face lift and now looks in keeping with KDE 4. The earlier version was so ugly and old-fashioned looking.

Marius wrote:Audacious2 should play CDs: on my laptop it apparantly does but produces no sound (Oh, damn! -- Linux can be irritating; why the hell audacious2 does not produce sound when playing CDs??).

Is it just CDs, or also MP3s? Could it be a PulseAudio issue? According to the PulseAudio Web site page The Perfect Setup:

This is what led me to utter that sigh of exasperation in my original post. I rarely give in to the temptation of getting frustrated with Linux but what seems to be perpetual immaturity of some programs can be really unnerving.

I haven't had a chance to do a thorough investigation. I discovered this behavior of audacious2 while composing my response to the original question of this thread and, of course, I went on checking sound settings with alsamixer, PulseAudio Volume Control, etc.

A couple of days ago I downloaded the ISO for SL 5.1-r1 GNOME x86_64 edition and installed it to a pen drive so that I could take a look at some GNOME-specific issues reported in the SL forums. I booted the pen drive on one of my PCs this evening and, on a whim, decided to check if Audacious2 sound is working. I had to configure PulseAudio using PulseAudio Volume Control (Getting PulseAudio to cooperate), and then both Audacious and Audacious2 worked. I don't have Audacious2 installed on my laptop running KDE 4 (originally an SL 5.0 installation but upgraded using Portage rather than Entropy) but, for the sake of curiosity, I'll install Audacious2 on that and see if it works too.

EDIT (Sun Dec 20, 2009 23:30): Yep, just installed Audacious2 under KDE 4 and it plays a CD fine. The version of Audacious and Audacious Plugins I installed are shown below:

The reported problems with audacious2 resolved on their own soon after I posted my report with the new version of audacious and audacious-plugins.

Before replying to your message, I ran today several tests on the current version of audacious. It opens & plays fine CDs as well as .wv (WAVPACK) files (previous version of audacious couldn't).

I discovered however new problems: the application hangs and becomes completely unresponsive when I ask it to open a .cue file or an .m4a file even though an MP4 AAC decoder is supposedly installed . I filed two new bug reports.

My experience with audio support under Linux continues to be totally frustrating (I like to listen to high quality lossless audio) compared to what is available in free players under Windows like AIMP2.